Recent reviews by Pure

I like this remake but it doesn't have the same impact as the original on PS2. It feels like the direction is just lacking in ways.

Visually, it looks great at times and other times pretty awful. There is a real lack of cohesion. The new character models for the main characters are great, though I am mixed about the new portraits, but the nameless NPCs are in a completely different visual style which creates a clash. Areas like the woods in Yakushima look genuinely awful. The shrubs and trees outside of the school are PS2 levels of quality. But areas like inside the school look great. Also UI aspects are very inconsistent. The text renders at 1080p but the portraits are in 4K. Why are there 1080p UI aspects in 2024? Even the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ P3 Portable remaster had 4K text. Also it's lacking some of the flair the original had. You don't really see everyone's unique summoning animations any more, and the fusion spell animation isn't anywhere near as cool as the original.

The music is really a mixed bag, some songs you actually could argue are better than the original but some are worse in pretty much every way. Every combat theme is worse. They're lacking punch and the drums do not sound anywhere near as good as the original versions. No idea why they didn't offer an option for the original soundtrack, but they have P4 and 5 combat music as DLC. Makes no sense to me. Kitajoh is no Meguro. Also the new evoker sound is ♥♥♥♥ compared to the original.

As for story presentation, again it is mixed. Direction in a lot of the scenes is not as good as the original. Like compare the intro FMV and the awakening to the original. Atmosphere is completely gone. I don't know why they replaced anime cutscenes with in engine ones in some cases, but also made brand new anime cutscenes for pointless ♥♥♥♥ like the new SEES outfits. Not a big fan. The colour filter change in January was jarring and stupid too. I did enjoy some of the new story content with the party though, Koromaru's new events were a highlight and actually made him one of my favourite characters.

This is also one of the easiest games I have ever played. Any difficulty from the original is gone. Theurgy is one of the most broken mechanics added to a Megaten game. Completely bypassing resistances and being able to crit just kills any difficulty. I played on the hardest difficulty and it is the easiest Megaten game I've played by a mile.

Also not a huge fan of the new Tartarus, I actually prefer the original in a lot of ways. Some of the blocks are just visually boring, like worse than the original somehow. I see a lot of people praising the changes to Tartarus but there aren't any really. I don't get it

Still, I recommend this game. It has issues, and definitely feels like a B team project with some direction decisions, but at the end of the day it has a lot of nice quality of life improvements over the original which make it less tedious to play (FES can get very tedious at times, and itself has some strange design choices) and it has the best story of modern Persona, with one of the greatest endings of all time.

Weak, messy story towards the end but overall worth playing.

It has a pretty great start, and remains interesting for a while but when you reach the 2/3 point the main plot stops being interesting, especially the Hawaii/Palekana side. Kiryu's chapters felt like filler too. Like one of them you're preparing for a potential fight, so you arbitrarily decide to go to Kamurocho to train or whatever, when you get there you do 2 forced substories that aren't relevant to the main plot whatsoever, then Kiryu says 'alright, that should be enough' and you go back to Yokohama to do the actual story.

The only parts of the story I really enjoyed were just the moments between the main party. I did not care much for any of the antagonists. Aspects of the ending itself felt rushed and incomplete too. I think this is probably my least favourite story in the series. Yamai was a pretty great character though, and the new party members are good too.

Combat is a definite improvement over 7's but some jank still remains. The new positioning stuff is great when it works but sometimes you'll line up an attack and your character will just randomly move to the side and completely miss half the people you were targeting. Also didn't really see the appeal to use most of the jobs. It's pretty fun generally though, never really got annoying or tiring.

Feels pretty unfinished towards the end. There's hardly any endgame side content, and there's no real fanfare for doing all the substories, not even an achievement. And Amon being tied to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dungeons is a bit ♥♥♥♥ really. 7 felt like a much more complete game.

Still, as a game overall, it's very good, and I do recommend it, especially if you enjoy doing side content in these games. Dondoko and Sujimon are pretty enjoyable, and there's a lot of decent substories. The Hawaii map is very nice too, I do look forward to seeing how they try to reuse in the next games that come out. Just don't go in expecting a really great story. Also ♥♥♥♥ Sega for this NG+ DLC bollocks

Very satisfying end to the trilogy. It's not without issues but it really is a great game.

The first half of the game with the party coming to terms with what happened during the ending of Mask of Deception had some really great writing and strong character moments. The characters really are where this series excels, with Haku and Kuon (can't forget Maroro too) becoming some of my favourite characters ever, their voice acting being especially great too. Unfortunately the second half kinda forgets most of the party exists and a few of them barely get any screen time.

There are a few weak arcs throughout though which really did bring down the enjoyment and the pacing. And there were quite a few moments that seemed like they'd be a big deal but nothing really came of them. Like when you initiate a draft on the citizens and Nekone mentions how you are using Oshtor's name to do these things (a draft being pretty bad) but apart from Nekone's reaction you hear anything else of it, and the draft is never mentioned again

I also found the main villain to be pretty weak, with his stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ followers. Pieces of ♥♥♥♥. But the final boss after his ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ was so hype that I stopped caring. Easily one of my favourite final boss fights ever, it was so damn good. And the ending itself was really satisfying, though I wish they expanded on it more by seeing more people's reactions to things.

Can't forget the great music too, consistently good through the entire trilogy. There's a lot of tracks that are just okay but a lot of standouts too.

It's got its fair share of issues but this trilogy is really worth investing your time into. The writing is really great (most of the time) albeit very slow, especially in the second game, but the payoff at the end is one I haven't gotten very often from games. There were ups and downs, but this trilogy really has had a large lasting effect for me after beating it.

Haku, the GOAT.

Not as strong as Prelude to the Fallen but the last few hours made it all worth it. I liked the main cast overall, but Kiwru kinda sucks and Atuy started to get on my nerves eventually. Maroro should've been a party member instead of Kiwru because he is actually a good character but you barely see him unfortunately. Seeing the returning characters was great though.

I found the slice of life parts overstayed their welcome in this one. Nothing happens for like 10 hours in the middle of this game. I wouldn't have really minded them as I enjoyed these scenes in the first one but the problem is most of them end up with Haku being attacked for no reason which just stops being funny when it is every other scene. And I swear half of them was just people buying and eating food. The start of the game was pretty good and the end was very strong though.

I can definitely see the sequel redeeming this game's faults a bit as it sets up some really cool stuff and the implications of a lot of the events could be interesting. Honestly I would've enjoyed this game a lot more of Haku didn't just randomly get attacked at the end of like every non story relevant scene. It got on my nerves eventually. There really are a lot of strong story moments in this game but I just get triggered thinking about poor Haku getting kicked in the shins or getting his head squeezed. ♥♥♥♥ you Nekone

The combat feels like it had more thought put into it than Prelude but the levels are just not interestingly designed at all which made them a slog at times.

Overall just a great story with strong characters. They all have a lot of time to develop and all get a lot of screen time which really helps you grow attached to them. I find it quite rare for a game to have pretty much every character be likeable and interesting, but this game shines in that regard. I only found a couple of the antagonists to be quite weak but one of them was just because they were comically evil which just isn't interesting in the slightest.

Pretty consistently great all the way through in the story department, with many standout moments and with great music to accompany them. Towards the end, the twists got really interesting and I loved how they were presented. Very memorable story to me, even though most of it was slice of life it was all very entertaining and developed the characters well. My only real downside with this game is that the progression between story sections didn't feel very cohesive at times, it felt like it just randomly skips time without really conveying it to the player.

The combat isn't all that great but I did find it satisfying getting everyone's chains maxed out and maxing their damage. Basically everyone becomes a monster if you just level attack, especially the ranged characters. You will pretty much one shot everything.

I liked this game but it is horribly overpriced for what you actually get. Short story with a lot of filler at the start and about 5 actual substories that have any thought put into them, the rest being menial tasks that have hardly any substance.

They also seem to have regressed in the combat department, it is very clunky and unresponsive, and I hate with a passion that you have to press X to toggle run even in combat. This was a completely braindead decision by the developers. There are a lot of design decisions that I just do not understand. The agent style's most developed gadget, the spider, being that it is the only one with any actual abilities tied to it, does not even work on boss fights in any capacity. The agent style just feels kinda useless in boss fights in general, and the clunky controls do not help at all. The gadgets feel underdeveloped in general, it would've been nice to have some heat moves tied to them, like one where you rush towards the enemy using the rocket boots could've been pretty entertaining. It feels like there aren't many heat moves in general really. The yakuza style doesn't feel great also, but I feel like it's more of a problem because of how the enemy AI works. You have a lot of charge attacks you can use but the enemies seem to block and dodge more often than in the other games, barring maybe Yakuza 3, and they completely block charge attacks, so you can be mid combo and want to go for a charge attack and they will just go into a block and completely negate it. It's fun at times but there's been much better combat in the series and you'd think they'd try to improve it every game, but it seems to go up and down.

I enjoyed the story itself but for the first few hours I was pretty bored. I enjoyed the intro but then I just didn't really care for much of what happened until you rescue Hanawa . The tutorials and introductions to systems were just not interesting and more grating than they are in the other games. However it does get pretty decent later on, with a nice finale that leaned into 7 quite well. I also think the ending has one of the best scenes in the series.

absolute abomination

Well worth playing. The gameplay is excellent and very fun, with good levels and well designed boss fights. The soundtrack is also very good as usual with Falcom. Story is fairly well paced and enjoyable, there are likeable characters and a few twists but it is not really the main focus of this game.

Can't really go wrong with this game, highly recommend it

The story in this game blows ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chunks, you got this turd of a character phin the tinkerer who is fixated on the fact that you lied to her about being spiderman but shes a massive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hypocrite moron because she lied to you about being tinkerer. What prick wrote this and thought it was good? The story is so laughably bad that you shouldn't even bother

Worst Bethesda game I've played.

Every individual part of this game is mediocre.

The space aspect is underdeveloped and boring.

The companions are annoying and boring.

The gameplay is boring. The combat is mediocre and stealth is barely functional even after maxing out the main perk for it.

The exploration is terrible. Bethesda usually excel at making great worlds with fun exploration but they have not created a world in this game. They have hand made a few cities and then the rest of the maps are all procedurally generated, with very little variation after a while. Even the main quest uses locations that are used in the procedurally generated planets. This is not good game design. It's boring. The game is boring.

Also, for some chimp brained stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ reason, they lock basic game mechanics behind perks. Want to use your booster pack? You can have one with the functionality, but you require a perk to actually use the function. What stupid prick bastard came up with this? It is stupid design.

Underwhelming game. Needs mods to be fun. Play it after a year